 | South West Trains: Encyclopedia II - South West Trains - Rolling stock notes
South West Trains - Rolling stock notes
South West Trains - Desiro fleet
The introduction of Desiro rolling stock built by Siemens was to replace the old slam-door trains which were coming to the end of their useful lives, and had been posing health and safety problems. The introduction was delayed because of the additional power needs of this type of stock: Network Rail spent £1 billion upgrading the power supply to take account of this.
The new trains are generally proving popular with passengers, with on-board information systems and full air-conditioning. Their faster acceleration is counterbalanced by the need to stop longer at each station, since they have fewer doors (although the fact that the old trains' doors could be opened while in motion was considered a safety hazard). In addition, the Desiros have many more components: all are computerised and subject to the possibility of breakdowns. It is estimated that the slam-door trains could achieve 60,000 miles (96,000 km) without breakdown; the Desiros an estimated 13,000 miles (20,800 km) but this is gradually improving.
The final slam-door train on regular passenger services ran from London Waterloo to Bournemouth on 26 May 2005 with units 1396, 3536 and 1398. Some slam-door units have been preserved on heritage railways and three are retained by SWT for operations on the Lymington Branch Line and for special duties.
The Desiro stock comes in two variants - Class 450 units have four cars and are mainly used on outer suburban services, while Class 444 units have five cars as well as longer coach bodies and are for use on longer-distance services to, among other destinations, Portsmouth.
South West Trains - Juniper Fleet
Thirty of these four-carriage units were ordered by South West Trains in 1998, to create extra capacity and to replace some of the ageing 4Cep units, which at the time were on short-term lease. Deliveries of these units commenced in 1998.
The class suffered from major technical problems, so none of the older units were withdrawn from service. It was six more years, in 2004, before the full fleet was in service. In 2003 and 2004, reliability was so dire that although they were only six years old, South West Trains decided that the units should be replaced by 2005 with the newer Class 450 Desiro units [1]. South West Trains planned to finish using the trains by December 10, 2005, but they still see regular use to and from Reading in the morning and evening peak hours, and sometimes during weekends.
South West Trains - Other notes
The vast majority of SWT's services are on electrified lines using the 750 V DC third-rail system. There is a relatively small diesel fleet for services on the West of England line to Exeter and Bristol. SWT operates up to 1690 trains per day. Due to the high volume of trains and years of under-investment, delays were commonplace and often led to passenger angst. Initiatives to improve performance have borne fruit and services are generally reliable. These include the introduction of a completely re-structured timetable in December 2004 and the commissioning of a unified Network Rail and SWT control centre at Waterloo, which aims to improve communication between the different organisations responsible for the operation of the railway.
Other related archives1396, 1398, 1923, 1967, 1996, 2004, 2005, 26 May, 3536, 4Cep, Alton, Ascot, Ash Vale, Basingstoke, Bournemouth, Brighton, Bristol Temple Meads, British Rail, Brookwood, Chandler's Ford, Chessington Branch, Clapham Junction, Class 444, Class 450, Class 455, DC, Dartmoor Railway, Dean Forest Railway, December 10, Desiro, Devon, Dorset, East Kent Railway, Eden Valley Railway, England, Exeter, February 2003, Great Central Railway, Greater London, Guildford, Hampshire, Hampton Court, Hounslow Loop Line, London, London Waterloo, London and South Western Railway, Lymington Branch Line, Lymington branch, Megabus, Megatrain, Network Rail, Network SouthEast, New Malden, Portsmouth, Portsmouth Direct Line, Post-privatisation British railway companies, Raynes Park, Reading, Romsey, Salisbury, Shepperton, Siemens, South Eastern Trains, South Western Main Line, Southampton, Southern, Stagecoach Group, Strawberry Hill, Surrey, Train Operating Company, United Kingdom, V, Vauxhall, Virginia Water, Waterloo, Waterloo to Reading line, Wessex Main Line, West of England Main Line, Weybridge, Weymouth, Wiltshire, Windsor, Woking, angst, bicycles, heritage railways, multiple units, privatisation of British Rail, third-rail, train
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Rolling stock notes", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
